Defends the Gospel of Jesus Christ and confessional Reformed Anglicanism. The term "Reformed" refers to the five solas of the Reformation and the five points of Calvinism. The Thirty-Nine Articles of Religion, 1662 Book of Common Prayer, and the Ordinal constitute the Anglican Formularies, the doctrinal standards of Anglicanism. The Lambeth Articles 1595 and Irish Articles 1615 are Reformed confessions. Isa 1:18,Rom 12:1, 2

About Me

In God's providence my doctrine has changed from Pentecostal Arminianism to Calvinism and Reformed Anglicanism. My Reformed standards are the Anglican Formularies (39 Articles of Religion, 1662 BCP, the Homilies), with the Westminster Standards and the Three Forms of Unity. Asbury Seminary, Wilmore, KY, 1995, M.Div. Southeastern University, Lakeland, Florida, 1991, B.A., Cum Laude. [Nota Bene: All e-mails to me are considered in the public domain. I reserve the right to post them on the blog. Anonymous comments may or may not be posted at the discretion of the blog owner.]
Anglo-Catholicism and Arminianism are heresies.
I view Amyraldianism as a departure from Reformed theology and I disagree with the three points of common grace and the "gracious offer". I do post or link to sites that disagree with my views at times and having those sites on my blog does not constitute an endorsement of everything said on those sites. I generally endorse the presuppositional apologetics of Gordon H. Clark.
I am open to speak at your church or to debate publicly. 2012 Copyright notice: None of my posts may be used without permission. Provide links to the original post.

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Martyred for the Gospel

The burning of Tharchbishop of Cant. D. Tho. Cranmer in the town dich at Oxford, with his hand first thrust into the fyre, wherwith he subscribed before. [Click on the picture to see Cranmer's last words.]

Collect of the Day

ALMIGHTY and everlasting God, who hatest nothing that thou hast made and dost forgive the sins of all them that are penitent; Create and make in us new and contrite hearts, that we, worthily lamenting our sins, and acknowledging our wretchedness, may obtain of thee, the God of all mercy, perfect remission and forgiveness; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

Daily Bible Verse

View Verse of the Day

Friday, July 20, 2012

The following is a brief review of Gordon H. Clark's book, God and Evil: The Problem Solved:

Somehow the idea of God’s permitting evil
without decreeing it seems to absolve God from the charge that he is the
‘author’ of sin, but one must be careful, both with respect to the
logic of the argument and to the full scriptural data. God ‘permitted’
Satan to afflict Job; but since Satan could not have done so without God’s
approval, the idea of permission hardly exonerates God. Is perfect
holiness any more
compatible with approving or permitting Satanic evil? If God could have
prevented, not only Job’s trials, but all the other sins and
temptations to which mankind is subject – if he foresaw them and
decided to let them occur – is he less reprehensible than if
he positively decreed them? If a man could save a baby from a
burning house, but decided to ‘permit’ the baby to burn, who would
dare say that he was morally perfect in so deciding?

Such a view of permission and free will
cannot coexist with God’s omnipotence. Neither is the Arminian view of
free will compatible with God’s omniscience, because omniscience
renders the future certain (31,32). If God foreknows all things, then of
necessity they will come to pass; otherwise, they could not be “foreknown.”
God foreknew, even foreordained, the crucifixion of his Son by the hands
of sinful men. Yet, according to Scripture the godless men who carried
out the act are responsible (Acts 2:22,23; 4:27,28). Could they have
done differently? Could Judas Iscariot not have betrayed Jesus Christ?
To ask the questions is to answer them; of course not (41). The God of
the Bible, writes Clark, “determines or decrees every action” (20).
Hence, Arminianism’s attempted refuge in free will is both “futile”
and “false; for the Bible consistently denies [the Arminian view of]
free will” (19).

Reformed theology does not disavow the fact
that Adam (and all men after him) had a “free will” in the sense of
“free moral agency” (13-16).
[5]
All men have freedom of choice in this sense of the term.
Men of necessity choose to do what they want to do; in fact, they could
not do otherwise. What Reformed theology does deny is that man has the
“freedom of indifference.” His freedom to choose is always governed
by factors: his own intellections,
habits, and so forth. Of course, all choices are subject to the eternal
decrees of God.

As mentioned, this is not only true of
post-fall man. It was also true of Adam prior to Genesis 3. The major
difference is that post-fall man, who still maintains his free moral
agency, has lost that which Adam originally possessed: the ability to
choose what God requires. Fallen man, in his state of “total
depravity,” always chooses to do that which he desires, but his sin
nature dictates that he always chooses evil (Romans 3:9-18; 8:7,8;
Ephesians 4:17-19). This “ability” to choose good is only restored
through regeneration.

Man, then, is never indifferent in his
willing to do anything. God has determined all things that will ever
come to pass. Yet, this does not undermine the responsibility of man.
There is no disjunction here. The Westminster Confession of Faith (3:1;
5:2,4) correctly states that (26-28):

God from all eternity did, by the most wise
and holy counsel of his own will, freely and unchangeably ordain
whatsoever comes to pass: yet so, as thereby neither is God the author
of sin, nor is violence offered to the will of the creatures, nor is the
liberty or contingency of second causes taken away, but rather
established….Although, in relation to the foreknowledge and decree of
God, the first cause, all things come to pass immutably and infallibly;
yet, by the same providence, he ordereth them to fall out according to
the nature of second causes, either necessarily, freely, or contingently….The
almighty power, unsearchable wisdom, and infinite goodness of God, so
far manifest themselves in his providence, that it extendeth itself even
to the first fall, and all other sins of angels and men, and that not by
a bare permission, but such as hath joined with it a most wise and
powerful bounding, and otherwise ordering and governing of them, in a
manifold dispensation, to his own holy ends; yet so as the sinfulness
thereof proceedeth only
from the creature, and not from God; who, being most holy and righteous,
neither is nor can be the author or approver of sin.